"Fourteen-year-old programmer and software developer Santiago Gonzalez might just be the next Steve Jobs. He already has 15 iOS apps to his name and dreams of designing for Apple. At age 12, Santiago became a full-time college student and is on track to earn his bachelor's degree in computer science and electrical engineering by age 16. By 17, when most teenagers are excited to just have their driver's license, Santiago will have his masters degree.
A self-professed computer nerd, Santiago is fluent in a dozen different programming languages and thousands of people have downloaded his apps for the Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Learn how Santiago's parents overcame a rigid school system that left their son intellectually stifled and depressed and instead followed an unconventional pathway to nurture his incredible gifts. Santiago's story is truly inspiring and his family's experience provides a powerful model for parents of exceptionally gifted children."
I recall that during my 4 years of high school in Southern California, though certainly not gifted, I was considered a 'nerd'. This was primarily because my interests did not reflect the values of majority of my classmates. A personal interest in science, foreign languages, history, and high academic standing was considered 'nerdy' behavior.
For thousands of years we have wrestled with the great questions of existence. Who are we? What is the world made of? How did we get here? The quest to answer these is the story of science.
Medical journalist Michael Mosley traces the often unpredictable path we have taken. From recreating a famous alchemist’s experiment, to following in Galileo’s footsteps, and putting himself in the hands of a hypnotist, Michael unpicks how science has changed the way we see ourselves, and the way we see our world.
It is a tale of courage and of fear, of hope and disaster, of persistence and success. It interweaves great forces of history – revolutions, voyages of discovery and artistic movements – with practical, ingenious inventions and the dogged determination of experimenters and scientists.
This is the story of how history made science and how science made history, and how the ideas which emerged made the modern world.
Part 1 of 6
1. What Is Out There? How we came to understand our planet was not at the center of everything in the cosmos.
2. What Is The World Made Of? How atomic theories and concepts of quantum physics underpin modern technology.
3. How Did We Get Here? Michael Mosley tells how scientists came to explain the diversity of life on earth.
4. Can We Have Unlimited Power? The story of how power has been harnessed from wind, steam and from inside the atom.
5. What is the Secret of Life? Michael Moseley tells the story of how the secret of life has been unraveled through the prism of the most complex organism known – the human body.
6. Who Are We? The twin sciences of brain anatomy and psychology have offered different visions of who we are. Now these sciences are coming together and in the process have revealed some surprising and uncomfortable truths about what really shapes our thoughts, feelings and desires.
"The Culture Wars Are Over and the Idiots Have Won.
A veteran journalist's acidically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.
In the midst of a career-long quest to separate the smart from the pap, Charles Pierce had a defining moment at the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where he observed a dinosaur. Wearing a saddle... But worse than this was when the proprietor exclaimed to a cheering crowd, “We are taking the dinosaurs back from the evolutionists!” He knew then and there it was time to try and salvage the Land of the Enlightened, buried somewhere in this new Home of the Uninformed.
With his razor-sharp wit and erudite reasoning, Pierce delivers a gut-wrenching, side-splitting lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States, and how a country founded on intellectual curiosity has somehow deteriorated into a nation of simpletons more apt to vote for an American Idol contestant than a presidential candidate.
With Idiot America, Pierce's thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated."
Question: You visited the Creation Museum while writing Idiot America. Describe your experience there. What was your first thought when you saw a dinosaur with a saddle on its back?
Charles P. Pierce: My first thought was that it was hilarious. My second thought was that I was the only person in the place who thought it was, which made me both angry and a little melancholy. Outside of the fact that its “science” is a god-awful parodic stew of paleontology, geology, and epistemology, all of them wholly detached from the actual intellectual method of each of them. The most disappointing thing is that the completed museum is so dreadfully grim and earnest and boring. It even makes dragon myths servant to its fringe biblical interpretations. Who wants to live in a world where dragons are boring?
It has become increasingly evident that evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity has become a major factor in the dumbing down of the USA. The most powerful nation on the planet has also become the most stupid. and that is unbelieveably sad . , , , , , ,
Idiot America How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Audio Book
Why NASA is saying 'we told you so' about doomsday hype ... a week early.
"Doomsday Predictions" seem to be especially popular with Americans. Every few weeks yet another religious nutjob starts sounding the most recent alarm about the end of the world, and for over a year now the new age crazies have joined the fray, babbling about an ancient culture that none of them actually know anything about.
People the world over utilize and depend on science in their daily lives, and yet deny actual scientific facts when they want to espouse some new off the wall scenario. This type of congnitive dissodance is perplexing.
"The Birds-of-Paradise Project reveals the astounding beauty of 39 of the most exquisitely specialized animals on earth. After 8 years and 18 expeditions to New Guinea and Australia, Cornell Lab scientist Ed Scholes and National Geographic photojournalist Tim Laman succeeded in capturing images of all 39 species in the bird-of-paradise family for the first time ever. This trailer gives a sense of their monumental undertaking and the spectacular footage that resulted."
Hypatia [ca. AD 350–370] was the daughter of Theon of Alexandria, who was a teacher of mathematics with the Museum of Alexandria in Egypt. A center of Greek intellectual and cultural life, the Museum included many independent schools and the great library of Alexandria.
Hypatia studied with her father, and with many others including Plutarch the Younger. She herself taught at the Neoplatonist school of philosophy. She became the salaried director of this school in 400. She probably wrote on mathematics, astronomy and philosophy, including about the motions of the planets, about number theory and about conic sections.
Hypatia corresponded with and hosted scholars from others cities. Synesius, Bishop of Ptolemais, was one of her correspondents and he visited her frequently. Hypatia was a popular lecturer, drawing students from many parts of the empire.
From the little historical information about Hypatia that survives, it appears that she invented the plane astrolabe, the graduated brass hydrometer and the hydroscope, with Synesius of Greece, who was her student and later colleague.
Hypatia dressed in the clothing of a scholar or teacher, rather than in women's clothing. She moved about freely, driving her own chariot, contrary to the norm for women's public behavior. She exerted considerable political influence in the city.
Orestes, the governor of Alexandria, like Hypatia, was a pagan (non-Christian). Orestes was an adversary of the new Christian bishop, Cyril, a future saint. Orestes, according to the contemporary accounts, objected to Cyril expelling the Jews from the city, and was murdered by Christian monks for his opposition.
Cyril probably objected to Hypatia on a number of counts: She represented heretical teachings, including experimental science and pagan religion. She was an associate of Orestes. And she was a woman who didn't know her place. Cyril's preaching against Hypatia is said to have been what incited a mob led by fanatical Christian monks in 415 to attack Hypatia as she drove her chariot through Alexandria. They dragged her from her chariot and, according to accounts from that time, stripped her, killed her, stripped her flesh from her bones, scattered her body parts through the streets, and burned some remaining parts of her body in the library of Caesareum.
Hypatia's students fled to Athens, where the study of mathematics flourished after that. The Neoplatonic school she headed continued in Alexandria until the Arabs invaded in 642.
When the library of Alexandria was burned by the Arab conquerors, used as fuel for baths, the works of Hypatia were destroyed. We know her writings today through the works of others who quoted her -- even if unfavorably -- and a few letters written to her by contemporaries.
"The Book of Mormon is one of the boldest hoaxes of all time. And millions of people have fallen for it. Joseph Smith Jr. claimed that an angel gifted him—an uneducated farm boy—with ancient golden plates and the ability to translate their hieroglyphics. From that improbable premise sprang The Book of Mormon and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, with its millions of followers, known as Mormons. In Book of Mormon, Book of Lies, authors Meredith Ray Sheets and Kendal M. Sheets expose The Book of Mormon and the story surrounding its creation as one of the greatest deceptions in the history of America, if not the entire world.
The result of twenty-five years of research, Book of Mormon, Book of Lies will alter the course of global religion, finance, and politics. Book of Lies proves that Smith’s manuscript, which he published in 1830, is nothing more than cleverly disguised plagiarism of The Travels of Marco Polo, the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World as recorded by his son, histories of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, and travel journals . . . all readily available to Smith. In Book of Lies, Meredith Sheets, a retired petroleum executive, and Kendal M. Sheets, an experienced intellectual property attorney, compare content from historic books with the content of The Book of Mormon. The results are astonishing. For the first time ever, the authors show exactly how the American-born religion of Mormonism and its religious scriptures were created by man and not by God."
Historical facts , linguistics, and archaeology all indicate that the Mormon religion is based on a fabrication of lies and deception, but will that convince someone who believes in the LDS faith? Sort of doubt it.
"In 1996 in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Italian mineralogist Vincenzo de Michele spotted an unusual yellow-green gem in the middle of one of Tutankhamun's necklaces. The jewel was tested and found to be glass, but intriguingly it was older than the earliest Egyptian civilisation. Working with Egyptian geologist Aly Barakat, they traced its origins to unexplained chunks of glass found scattered in the sand in a remote region of the Sahara Desert.
But the glass was itself a scientific enigma. How did it get there and who or what made it? "
"The countdown has begun for the 21st century’s most heroic and potentially deadliest expedition. A manned mission to Mars has been the dream of scientists for decades – and now “Mars Rising” explores that dream and the challenges being faced by international space agencies and in laboratories. .....
“Mars Rising” offers a comprehensive examination of the challenges, the obstacles, the fears and the successes of the mission and experts with diverse backgrounds and nationalities contributed their knowledge to this series. Producers Galafilm secured unprecedented co-operation from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and various Russian space agencies and contractors like Energia, gaining access to top personnel and up-to-the-minute prototypes. Over 300 scientists were consulted for the series and more than 60 experts, including former and current astronauts, appear on camera. Critical subjects covered include spaceship design, possible trajectories, rocket fuel, finding new life forms, new thoughts on astronaut selection and training, space suit engineering, medical training for deep space, blasting through Mars’ atmosphere, life support systems and robotics.
“Mars Rising” was shot in High Definition in 48 locations over a period of almost two years, from March 2005 to January 2007, filming for an unprecedented 140 days. Crews were dispatched to Russia, Europe, the United States, China, Chile and across Canada, including the Canadian Arctic. Various crews spent a total of 32 days in Russia, filming at Energia, Lavochkin, IBMP and Star City. At the height of filming in August 2005, four separate film crews were working simultaneously in the U.S. and Russia."
One of the most delighful, and informative, channels in the entire humongous YouTube video universe is that of CGPGrey [ http://www.youtube.com/user/CGPGrey ].
Short, concise, to the point videos with illustrations [AND ACTUAL FACTS, something sadly lacking in most YouTube videos]. And fascinating if you enjoy learning.
